December 29, 2009 5:00 pm

For the past 11 years the state’s minimum wage rate has begun the New Year with an increase. Not so in 2010.

The state Department of Labor & Industries has issued a press release reminding employers (and employees) that the minimum wage in Washington will not increase in 2010. It will remain at $8.55 an hour – because the Consumer Price Index did not increase in the past 12 months.

The agency says employers may continue for the next 12 months using the current minimum wage poster.

Feeds

This announcement is a good decision. However a better decision would be to suspend the state minimum wage legislation.

In an editorial written for the Washington Post “Kill these job-killers” Charles Lane recommended (among other measures) that we reduce the minimum wage in an effort to stimulate hiring. And in the WSJ noted wage economist David Neumark pointed out that last summers increase in the federal minimum killed about 300,000 entry level jobs. If you have a young person in your home who can’t find a job you can blame this well meaning law.

i had to fire a young worker, 2 earlier this year. They couldn’t quite get the idea that they we weren’t ‘school’… where you simply come when it is convenient and you don’t just go home whenever you have the sniffles. One semi snowy day they assumed somehow that we would take a schoolish snow day and without calling loaned their vehicles to an aunt so SHE could get to work and skip the day. We fired em that day. State employment paid out for one and luckily we had enough warnings on the other that he got nothing. However, months later they seemed to have learned something… commenting to our other workers that they didn’t know how nice they had it and would be happy to come back to simply sweep the floors for minimum wage or less. We paid them 3 over minimum back or thereabouts. Now they are at minimum yes and we should have had them at less than minimum so that they could LEA:RN something working habits and hard work and less entitlement. Entitlement is the core problem with a minimum wage…. period

1. you give cheap employers an excuse to set rate exactly right there without thinking.

2. the youngest workers see that number and assume they are ‘entitled’ to ‘earn’ that number.

The market rules…. the market sets the rates…. work hard and become valuable and the market will command you will eventually get paid your worth. It won’t come to you, you will have to go out and make it happen…. *see ‘reality’.

Minimum wage laws and the such are simply mommy state ways of running the world. Moms always want to protect their children from the hard knocks of the real world and often just as these modern mothering nanny states are over protective and are seriously given to run their households into undisciplined chaos and broke.

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